In the year he was born, the Wright brothers made their historic first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and a modernizing Japan was embroiled in a dispute with Russia over Manchuria that would erupt into the Russo-Japanese War in early 1904.

Koide (pronounced "Ko-ee-deh") worked as a tailor when he was younger. He was recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest man last August.

The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said he died at a hospital in Nagoya, central Japan, where he had been treated for heart problems.

Japan's oldest man is now Masamitsu Yoshida, a 111-year-old Tokyo native who was born on May 30, 1904. It was not immediately known whether Yoshida is also the world's oldest male.

Japan, a rapidly aging country, has more than 61,000 centenarians, according to the nation's family registration records. Nearly 90 percent are women.

The world's oldest person is an American woman, 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn, New York.